The Week

News

One of them, the one we know most intimately these days, is that it causes social crises, such as the so-calling “housing crisis.”

We know what the “housing crisis” is not. It is not a housing crisis. It is an "affordable housing” crisis. And it is a crisis of homelessness. It is called a “housing crisis” to fool people. But there are “Now Leasing” and “For Rent” signs all over town on market rate housing that most people in Berkeley cannot afford.

The crisis of affordable housing results from a political failure to implement a simple proposition, that “housing is a human right.” That proposition cannot be implemented because property rights supersede human rights in the US (they don’t in other places). That is why city government throws up its hands, says “there’s nothing we can do” – besides organize studies and subcommittees. .

So there’s some empty rhetoric about this crisis that needs to be desanctified.
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A four-time felon has been charged with attempted murder for allegedly stabbing a woman at a homeless camp in Berkeley earlier this month and leaving her paralyzed and in critical condition, Alameda County prosecutors said.
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Italian elections are always complex affairs, but the upcoming Mar. 4 vote is one of the most bewildering in several decades: the right is resurgent, the left embattled, and the issue drawing the greatest fire and fury has little to do with the economic malaise that has gripped the country since the great economic crash of 2008.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece, reprinted from the Marin Post, has a much longer introduction than the usual Planet article, but keep at it, because it's well worth the time it will take to read, and is very entertaining as well. Just click on "more" to see the whole story in one place.-more-

In response to an ongoing series of laptop thefts and robberies which have spiked in recent months, the Berkeley Police Department Patrol Division has begun placing undercover officers in a number of cafes citywide. Those efforts paid dividends on Saturday evening at approximately 7:54pm, when officers observed 4 subjects get out of a car and walk into the café. Seconds later, two of the men stole two laptops and the foursome ran back to the waiting getaway car. One of the victims chased after the suspects and attempted to recover his laptop. The suspect vehicle fled and the undercover officers directed a large number of officers into the area to affect the arrest.
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Opinion

Editorials

Another day, another massacre. The script by now is depressingly familiar.

“We have them in our prayers.”

Really? Don’t blame your god, whoever he/she might be, for this one. The culprits are easily found, and their allegiance is to the Devil Himself, proxied by big bucks from the National Rifle Association.

The difference, this time, is that the victims were a bunch of schoolkids.

Their impassioned and articulate surviving classmates don’t intend to be victims forever. They’ve taken on the National Rifle Association’s Florida lackeys, travelling to the state capital to confront those most responsible for the carnage, the Florida legislature, which has consistently refused to enact sensible gun control measures .

Tallahassee, where the legislature meets, is far, far away—seven hours by bus—from Broward County, where the Parkland murders took place. That county, represented by a Democrat, is usually considered the most civilized part of a famously corrupt backwater state.

Most Florida legislators have always looked and acted like the denizens of the cartoon swamp where the possum Pogo tried to make some sense out of the world, famously observing, ”We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Four decades or so ago, when I was an investigative reporter, I did a juicy story for New Times Magazine on how the Disney corporation bought off enough crooked Florida electeds to bypass the state’s environmental laws to build Disney World.

Not much has changed since then. The enemy is still Us—or at least those we choose to represent us, if they're corrupt. Now it’s the NRA which has bought the Florida Legislature off.
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Public Comment

As further proof of the NRA’s undue influence, President Trump parroted his benefactor, by offering a bizarre and outlandish proposal to mass shootings by deputizing teachers to be armed guards. Imagine the scene where a shooter enters a classroom armed with a military style AR 15 and Rambo style, commences shooting. It’s extremely doubtful if the teacher would have the presence of mind to fire back and kill the assassin all within a few seconds. It is also likely the teacher may very well kill his own students in a hasty act of friendly fire. How many teachers would be willing to take such a risk? Envisioning teachers as armed militia with military discipline ready to do effective battle, is a cruel fantasy masquerading as a remedy.
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During his presidential campaign, D.J. Trump repeatedly harrumphed that Mexico "will pay for The Wall." Why? Because, in his twisted scenario, Mexicans were crossing into the US to commit rapes and murders.

Using Trump's theory of "causation accountability," it's only fair to demand that, henceforth, following any future mass-shootings, all funeral expenses should be paid by the NRA.

Following the mass shooting in Parkland Florida, “Health Affairs” ranked the United States the most dangerous wealthy nation in the world for children. Shooting deaths are 49 times higher than other rich countries. The teenagers slaughtered in Florida had the gross misfortune of growing up in a society that cares more about gun owners rights than their safety.The pro-life Republicans are fond of declaring the sanctity of the unborn child but withdraw such concerns once they are born.

The NRA has a chokehold on US lawmakers silencing them with large donations. President Trump is a prime example, providing cover for the crimes of the NRA by falsely conflating the Florida and other massacres with mental illness and not the proliferation of guns. A report by McClatchy revealed that the FBI is looking into whether Russian bankers with Kremlin ties funneled money through the NRA during the 2016 election. The NRA is complicit in all mass killings.

What a grotesque legacy to bestow on future generations of our children. We don’t love them enough to effectively protect them. It is time to open the windows of our souls and scream loudly so that our voices reverberate across the land and reach our stone- hearted lawmakers who have sold their souls to the devil incarnate – the NRA and their enablers.

The AR15 is the weapon of choice for all mass killings. It must be banned immediately.
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Beset by a surfeit of Republican-generated cynicism, it occurs to me that the fastest way Betsy DeVos & Co. can drive American into the arms of private for-profit education is to put as many guns into public classrooms as possible.
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I have sympathy for the old hippies in Berkeley, such as yourselves (Zelda Bronstein: Wiener's SB 827 Claims Debunked by SF Planning Department Report, Monday February 12, 2018) and your kindred spirits in Marin (Bob Silvestri, Snowflakes In My Back Yard: San Francisco Planning Department's Take on SB 827). It must be painful to realize that you have grown old and absurdly wealthy as landowners while homeless people set up tents along the railroad tracks and the kids these days can't afford the rent. Hard to live up to Peace and Love. Much easier to rant among yourselves than to admit that: 1) The times, they are a changin', and 2) You'll be drenched to the bone, because the sea level is on track to rise up to 6.6 feet (https://sealevel.nasa.gov/understanding-sea-level/projections/empirical-projections) by 2100. Just a couple hundred more feet in the coming centuries (https://thinkprogress.org/were-aiming-at-200-feet-or-more-of-sea-level-rise-here-s-what-that-looks-like-5500c703671b/) You can save the gourmet ghetto and [ your favorite part of town here ] as the old suburb you once were young in...but not for long. While there's still time, make room for other folks who want to experience everything that Berkeley has to offer. There's enough room for you, and for them.
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It hurts to hear the cry of families who see their sons and daughters shot in the school in Florida. Educators feel the pain of the most recent mass school shooting. Let us add during this month of February, a demand to our Government, to have a heart to hear and feel the pain of the public as well.

The public needs assurances about the safety and security of their children going to their schools. The quick and easy solution to stop these untimely deaths in public schools and other public places is to take away all arms and ammunitions from all places, except from the local police and the Department of Defense. Let there be an experiment to make America free of gun violence.
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Following the mass shooting in Parkland Florida, “Health Affairs” ranked the United States the most dangerous wealthy nation in the world for children. Shooting deaths are 49 times higher than other rich countries. The teenagers slaughtered in Florida had the gross misfortune of growing up in a society that cares more about gun owners rights than their safety.The pro-life Republicans are fond of declaring the sanctity of the unborn child but withdraw such concerns once they are born.
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In the wake of the Florida school shooting, conservative media (writers and TV journalists) has offered 3 major proposals to reduce such incidents: 1) concentrate on mental health, 2) if you see something suspicious report it, 3) arm and train school personnel in addition to present security personnel. All three are problematic.
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It was very disturbing to hear you say almost offhandedly, as we were leaving the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Downtown Community Benefits meeting last Thursday, that paragraph F, Alteration of Community Benefits Package, should be dropped from the Resolution.

The majority of Berkeley voters elected you and other council members who ran as progressives because we wanted the city to reverse course from the extremely pro-developer policies of Mayor Bates and the previous council majority and focus on serving the city’s needs. But here is an instance where we’re not seeing the more careful consideration of the implications of policy that we voted for.

At the heart of our concerns was Bates and his council majority's seemingly unthinking approval of huge disruption downtown, damage to existing businesses and public services like the High School, the YMCA, the Library, and the Post Office, especially during the construction process, and ever more market rate housing instead of the low and moderate income housing we need. The community benefits proposal approved for 2211 Harold Way was an insult to the city of Berkeley. For developer Joseph Penner, no doubt advised by former Planning Department employee Mark Rhoades, to propose eight replacement theaters as a significant community benefit after the demolition of our beautiful, comfortable, successful existing theaters was like a black joke.
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I am so sick-and-tired of the same horror being repeated again and again and, tragically, once again. Hundreds of mass shootings, killing thousands of children, women, and men, and still, Republicans in Congress refuse to enact strong gun control. They say it would not be effective, that it would be unconstitutional. It would endanger their funding from the National Rifle Association.
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In an unprecedented 17,000-word letter released on February 14, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (a.k.a., the Taliban) has appealed directly to the American people and "peace-loving Congressmen [sic] to put pressure on your authorities and demand an end to the occupation of Afghanistan."

"[I]t is not the duty of America to draft laws and suggest systems for other countries," the letter states—especially when doing so entails the deaths of "3,546 American and foreign soldiers" and the killing of "tens of thousands of helpless Afghans, including women and children."

In 2001, George W. Bush claimed the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to accomplish three goals: (1) to establish a legitimate government, (2) to eradicate the narcotics trade, and, (3) to eliminate the Taliban resistance.

In its letter, the Taliban notes how this plan worked out.

• Today, the U.S.-backed government in Kabul in known largely for its greed and incompetence—widely acknowledged as one of the world's most corrupt regimes and a leading violator of human rights.

• The opium poppy trade—eradicated under Taliban rule—has exploded since the arrival of Western forces, expanding from 185 hectors to 328,000 hectors. In December 2017, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crimes reported that drug production in Western-controlled regions of the country had increased 87 percent in that year alone.

• After 16 years of fighting, the Pentagon has failed to "secure" the country. In September 2016, Donald Trump's generals carried out 751 deadly air strikes in the county but gained "not even a single inch of land." According to the UN, 60 percent of the country remains firmly under Taliban control.

Declaring that "Having a sovereign country free from any foreign occupation is our natural and human right," the letter argues that "[e]stablishing an Islamic system conforming to the creed of our people can never be called terrorism by any law of the world."

Unlike Washington, the Taliban writes, "[W]e have no agenda of playing any destructive role in any other country and we have practically proven over the past 17 years that we have not interfered in any other country."
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Columns

President Trump was predictable in blaming the Florida high school shooting on mental illness, and in offering no hint of a solution. He was predictable in complimenting the bravery of first responders, and in expressing sorrow over this loss. In addition, he was predictable in disrespecting those who are outraged by the government's inadequate weapons policy.

Mass shooters are completely different and distinct from the overwhelming majority of mentally ill people, who simply are trying to make our lives livable, and who are trying to get through another day, or who are trying to make ends meet with the pitiful income we get from SSDI and/or SSI.

The overwhelming majority of mass shooters are either terrorists or sociopaths, and do not fit the diagnoses of schizophrenia, depression or bipolar illnesses.
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Italian elections are always complex affairs, but the upcoming Mar. 4 vote is one of the most bewildering in several decades: the right is resurgent, the left embattled, and the issue drawing the greatest fire and fury has little to do with the economic malaise that has gripped the country since the great economic crash of 2008.

These days predicting election outcomes in Europe is a fool’s game because the electorate is so volatile, a state one hardly can blame it for given the beating it has taken from the almost decade-long policies of the European Union (EU). The organization’s rigid economic strictures for dealing with the debts incurred from the 2008 crisis—social service cutbacks, tax hikes, massive layoffs, and privatization—have sharply increased economic inequality throughout the continent and created a “lost generation” of young people: poorly educated, unemployed, and locked into low paying part-time jobs (if they manage to find one).
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On February 16th, the Justice Department unveiled the first of four pillars of the Mueller investigation into interference in the 2016 election: the indictment of 13 Russians for Internet-based meddling. This should end Trump claims the Mueller investigation is a "hoax." The DOJ announcement suggests that we should expect many more indictments as a product of the remaining three pillars of the probe.

The February 16th announcement, by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, focussed on an extensive effort, conducted by Internet trolls headquartered in St. Petersburg, to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Using a variety of tactics, the Russians began by disparaging Hillary Clinton, switched to inhibiting voter participation, and concluded by encouraging Americans to either vote for Trump or a third-party candidate, such as Jill Stein. (At its peak, the Russian effort had a monthly budget of $1.25M and employed hundreds of operatives.)

The DOJ indictment is noteworthy because it arrived unexpectedly -- there were no press leaks suggesting an indictment was imminent -- and the 37-page legal brief was unusually thorough -- it appears the FBI had a source inside the St. Petersburg troll factory ("Internet Research Agency"). The indictment revealed that the head of the Russian operation was Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close friend of Russian premier Vladimir Putin.
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In February 14, 2018, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) joined by 24 Democrats introduced new legislation that would ban AR-15s, which is the most popular rifle in the U.S. According to Sen. Feinstein, an AR-15 is a military weapon. No militaries use civilian AR-15s.
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The 2018 midterm elections will occur on November 6th. Democrats have been predicting a "blue wave," but recently there's been an uptick of support for President Trump and, as a result, Democrats are nervous. Nonetheless, the eleven western states look positive for Dems.
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Vice President Mike Pence represented the U.S. at the Olympic opening ceremonies in PyeongChang, South Korea. Athletes from North Korea and South Korea marching under the same flag in the opening ceremonies of the 2018 Olympic Winter Games was a significant symbolic moment for many. The North Korean delegation was led by Kim Yo Jong, the trusted younger sister of North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un
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According to numerous sources, schizophrenia reduces life expectancy by about twenty years. Heavy smoking reduces life expectancy by about ten years. Put those two together, and it adds up to parents much of the time outliving their mentally ill offspring. And I have seen this happen as I've lived among persons with mental illness. I could name a dozen or more mentally ill acquaintances, and some friends, who met this fate.
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Arts & Events

Over the weekend of February 23-26, American Bach Soloists performed Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion throughout the wider Bay Area (including Davis). I caught the Saturday performance at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church. Bach composed his St.John Passion for Good Friday, 1724, and it was performed in the St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig during Bach’s first year as Kappelmeister in Leipzig. (Bach, by the way, was Leipzig’s third choice for this post. They offered it first to Georg Philipp Telemann, then to Christoph Graupner, who both turned it down. Only then did they turn to Bach.)
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On Sunday afternoon, February 25, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in collaboration with San Francisco Opera presented at Nourse Theatre a round-table discussion with four great opera singers: Marilyn Horne, Patricia Racette, Deborah Voigt, and Frederica von Stade. Serving as emcee was Stephen Rubin, a trustee of San Francisco Conservatory of Music and president of Henry Holt & Co., publisher of many prize-winning books. As one might expect, the divas traded compliments with one another and generally spoke of their good fortune and gratitude in having such successful careers.
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Written comment is accepted until April 26, 2018 to Oppose the EPA Proposed Repeal of Clean Power Plan,. The San Francisco EPA “Listening” Session on Wed, Feb 28, can be live streamed. It is too late to register to attend. The 3 “listening” sessions start at 8:30 am and end at 7:30 pm.

2018 is a critical election year and 3 groups/organizations are actively working now to oust Republicans from Congressional Districts. These groups are registering voters and canvasing on issues in Republican held districts.

Performing with London’s Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on Valentine’s Day at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre, Scottish-born violinist Nicola Benedetti gave a thrilling rendition of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61. Presented under the auspices of Cal Performances, this concert also included Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 60. These two works were written by the composer about the same time in 1806 that he was working on preliminary sketches for his Fifth Symphony. Interestingly, both the Fourth Symphony and the Violin Concerto offer unusual opportunities for the timpani.
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This weekend, February 15-17, Conductor Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony Herbert Blomstedt wound up a two-week visit during which he conducted two great works by Beethoven, a great symphony by Mozart, and a rarely heard symphony by Swedish composer Wilhelm Stenhammar. Now age ninety, Herbert Blomstedt never ceases to amaze us. Eons ago, Blomstedt led the San Francisco Symphony from 1985 to 1995, and during his decade-long tenure here he raised the orchestra’s standing and led the Symphony on prestigious international tours. Known for his modesty and good-natured humility, Blonstedt had a way of getting what he wanted from an orchestra while never hectoring them as some conductors do, but also, and more surprisingly, by making his orchestra members respect , revere and even love him.
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